linux noob <------ wifi issues >,<

ok. i got an old laptop from a friend and it needed an os. so i went and put ubuntu 12.04 on it. single boot. so it wouldnt let me on the internet, in anyway no connections were available i googled everything troubleshooted a billion different things and nothing helped i did the aptget install crap and it would say command not found and all this crap. so i i found out i need a driver, ok not bad, but i cant get a driver without internet.... cat 5 ethernet? yeah well the ethernet port on the laptop must be busted becasue i tryed 3 different cat 5's and none worked. so i looked some more crap up and someone said, get linux mint cinnamon, it will have the driver. so i uninstalled ubuntu 12.04 and got cinnamon, same issues. then someone said ty ubuntu 10.04 so i go and uninstall mint and get ubntu 10.04 iv yet to connect to the internet and im going on 3 days of trouble shooting and this is becoming a verry bid headache, one of my friends sent me to this website. someone please help me, iv never done linux before and i dont have a win disk to put on the computer. if possible if someone could shoot me a private message or what ever that would be awesome

Re: linux noob <------ wifi issues >,<

The links that you were provided contain commands to run as a diagnostic. If you do not include the information that the OS is giving you when you run those commands then we will continue to have no idea as to what the problem is.

This old laptop, does it require the pushing of a combination of keys in order to switch on the wireless adapter in the motherboard?

If you run the command

Code:

rfkill list

What do you see?

On my machine I see:

0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Softblocked: yes
Hardblocked: no

I get that message because I am connected by ethernet and I have disabled Wireless connection. So, the Wireless LAN (the wireless adapter on the motherboard) is switched off by software.

If on your system it says Hardblocked: yes, then you need to press a key combination to physically switch the wireless adapter on.

Regards.

P.S. Recognition of wireless adapters or devices is done by the Linux kernel and not by the distribution. So, if Linux does not recognise the wireless adapter (have a built in driver module) then Ubuntu will not be able to use it and neither will any other Linux distributions. So, installing other distributions is not the way to solve these issues.

I doubt very much if an older version of Ubuntu will have drivers that the very latest version does not have. As this laptop is old then there should be a driver module for it and it maybe installed. Running those diagnostic tests will provide that information.

Last edited by grahammechanical; September 19th, 2012 at 01:13 PM.

It is a machine. It is more stupid than we are. It will not stop us from doing stupid things.Ubuntu user #33,200. Linux user #530,530